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I'd suggest when this starts going that you seek submissions from all over the DIS, esp the creative and community boards. A lot of people "down there" don't venture "up here". I bet a lot would be interested though!

I did this for a Christmas present to our staff one year. We did it in house and it cost us very little except for the paper. We printed the receipes on regular paper. the front pages and dividers were printed on different colored card stock paper. At the beginning of each section I had different information pages, Rules for Using Herbs, 4 pages back to back of Kitchen Hints and Household Hints. At school we have a machine that puts the holes in the top and we bought the binding strip that goes into the holes. As we did all the work ourselves our only costs were the paper, printer ink and the binding strip. Since I never paid to get one done, I don't know how cost effective this is. However, the good news is we could make up 100 at a time and sell them at different functions? Plus, the one I made up is a Holiday one and that might be another idea for a Holiday gift. My only concern is that I copied the information pages, but I am sure if we posted for "tips" we could get enough of our own and we wouldn't have to worry if we were taking copyrighted material.

I live in Philadelphia PA and if I could get 3 or 4 people to help me with the project, I would take it on. I don't know how to set up a pay-pal account but I am sure there are plenty of people who could do that?

Also, I have some great recipes to add if someone else is taking this on and we do it professionally.

I would love to contribute, as well! I have a number of fun recipes that I would love to share and I think the rest of the DL Team could find some things to contribute!

If you wanted to have a special section with favorite recipes from the podcast and blogger teams, I will be happy to spearhead their collection. I know Tom makes a mean chicken soup and T has some great candy recipes! (Just send me an email at nancy@wdwinfo.com!)

I've done a family cookbook from beginning to end and participated in several church cookbooks and it's a lot of fun (and a lot of work). I know we would buy at least 5 to have and give as gifts - maybe more.

I haven't forgotten about ya! I'm working with Dave Parfitt right now on coordinating the cookbook & what it will look like. As we hammer out the details & particulars, we'll keep y'all posted!

Thanks for the support!!

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Wow, I guess I am too late. I have been sick and off the boards for a while. I am feeling better so decided to take on this project and just completed typing the posting to add here. Below is what I came up with. Since I all this typed up I decided it couldn't hurt to add it and maybe you could use some of the ideas? Anything I can do to help, please let me know. Penny

Hi my name is Penny. I saw a post a while ago about making a GKTW Cookbook and I would like to volunteer to do that. I have some experience with making a cookbook. About 10 years ago my management team and I decided to make gifts for the people we supervised (about 200 people). We made a personalized cook book. The book was a hit and I still have mine today. They werent terribly hard to make, just somewhat labor intensive.

We each came up with recipes for various sections of the book that included appetizers, entrees and desserts. At the front of each section, before the recipes, we put one to two pages of kitchen/cooking/food tips. The books were 8 ½ by 5 ½ and they opened up width wise, rather than length. Imagine an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper folded in half. So I put two recipes on one sheet of paper, printed them back to back so there were four recipes on each 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper. I cut the pages in half so now I had 2 pages 8 ½ x 5 ½. We had access to a manual comb bind machine to put holes in the top of the pages. We used thicker card stock paper to separate the sections of the book and used the same card stock cover paper for the front and back. Since it was the winter holiday we used green, blue and red card stock paper, but since these books will be non-holiday we can use a variety of pretty colored cardstock. We then bound the books using the plastic comb bindings.

Once the typing is done all that is left to do is the binding. I figure that paper, binding (and ink if we do a lot of color pages) should cost no more than $ .75 per book about 150 pages thick. It will probably be cheaper as I inflated the prices to be on the safe side and I cant imagine it will be bigger than 110 pages, which if you take out 8-10 pages for the front, back and section dividers, 5-10 pages of tips and cooking suggestions, it still leaves you about 90 pages front and back so thats about 180 recipes.

So, heres the challenge. If I can get your favorite recipe and your favorite cooking tip I will put them all together. I do have the tips that I used for our gift, but I dont want to take the chance that they might be copyrighted so I prefer we collect our own. I think that if we are going to limit it to 4 ¼ by 5 ½ there really wont be room for pictures? I am thinking if we make over 150 recipes we should be able to charge at least $6 (plus postage) or more for it? Anything over $.75 per book will be profit for GKTW. I will volunteer my time, but if I get a lot of orders, it will take some time to do. Unless I hook up with some people from around the Philadelphia area to help me out.

SO  your thoughts? Should I do this? Will you send me recipes and tips? Do you have other suggestions? Will you buy one (or more) once they are done? It will take me a couple of months as we are in the process of buying a house, but this could be a good stress reliever. Could I get some volunteers to proof my typing?

We would need to decide on the sections. We used only three sections; Appetizers, Entrees and Desserts. We could add more sections like soups, vegetarian, side dishes and so on.

I also add Italian seasoning & onion flakes. Mix together well. Form into small balls. Fry in frying pan till brown. Add leavings from bottom of frying pan to gravy. You can also bake in oven at 350°

Gravy - Empty 6-7 cans of crushed tomatoes into a large pot (you can use whole tomatoes but you have to break them up; I dont use tomato sauce.). Add onion flakes, Italian seasoning, basil, garlic, salt & pepper to your liking. Fry up a couple pounds of hot sausage (you can also use sweet, but hot sausage gives it the best taste). Add sausage & some of the sausage leavings to gravy (dont worry if you add too much grease to gravy, you can always spoon it off before you serve it). Add meatballs and leavings to gravy. Cook for 3-5 hours stirring often. Taste and add seasoning to your liking. You can also throw in a couple chicken breasts or a piece of pork or beef.Gravy freezes well, so bag it in a zip lock freezer bag, throw it in the freezer and you have a quick meal whenever you want it.

Below are a few tip suggestions to give people an idea by what I mean by "tips".· Store spices in a cool, dark place, not above your stove. Humidity, light and heat will cause herbs and spices to lose their flavor.

For lump free gravy add just a pinch (no more) of salt to your water before you begin mixing the gravy. Also, if you find that your gravy is too greasy, add a pinch of baking soda to get rid of the greasiness.

If you have fatty soup or stew drop a few ice cubes into the mix. Stir everything around, and then remove the ice cubes before they melt. The fat will stick to the ice cubes, allowing you to get rid of it when you remove the ice cubes.